The Grateful Dead: the greatest brand ever

Last weekend I took part in the Music Industry Conference in Syracuse. The two-day conference included panels, guest speakers and a series of great performances. I sat through lecture after lecture about how to get a record deal, the importance of branding and marketing, and what a musician must do to make it big. I left the conference with one thought: I’m glad I’m not a musician.

On Friday night – after the conference had convened for the day – I meandered over to the War Memorial to see two of the living members of the Grateful Dead with the band Furthur.

Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, two guys pushing 70, filled the auditorium with fans from every walk of life. Silver beards grooved alongside soccer moms, drug fiends and clean cut hipsters. There was no base demographic – just Deadheads.

Many people braved the wintry mix all day, spending the morning tailgating in the wind and snow. Some came from hours away without tickets to the sold out show, hoping they could score a deal and see the band.

As I looked at the massive fanbase Furthur had amassed, I couldn’t help but think of the messages of the conference that morning.

“Bands don’t just magically gain followers,” said Armand Petri, a music industry professor at SUNY Fredonia. “You’ve got to be out there 24/7. You’ve got to create your brand. You’ve got to market yourselves.”

“It helps to be good looking,” said Larry Luttinger, executive director of CNY Jazz Central. “Good looking people make it in this business.”

“Don’t put out records that aren’t your best stuff and aren’t well-produced,” said Matt Ramone of Phil Ramone Music Management.

The Grateful Dead didn’t have Facebook and YouTube with which to create their brand. They allowed tapes of varying quality and content to circulate throughout San Francisco. And they sure as hell weren’t winning any beauty contests.

They grew beards, dropped acid and made up their shows as they went. Most important, they made great music. And they are the most successful touring act in history.

You could argue the band branded and marketed themselves better than anyone in history. But their strategy wasn’t an active one. It was organic. The fans created a community, which eventually became the Grateful Dead brand. Artwork and traditions arose from a group of dedicated Deadheads who followed the band around the country. Do you really think they had a marketing rep standing outside shows handing out grilled cheese sandwiches?

Granted, the Dead spoke to a different generation and existed in a different world than the one we live in today. But with a never-ending supply of bands posting material on the internet and producing CDs at almost no cost, if the Dead were up and coming today, would they have been lost today in a sea of mediocrity?

Musicians today need to be part artist and part salesman. They have to distinguish themselves. They have to network. And they need to get lucky. The lazy-stoner-genius model just isn’t as relevant as it once was.

So what would Jerry Garcia be doing if he had been born 40 years later? Would we see Dead videos popping up on YouTube? Would he be soliciting fans to “like” his page on Facebook. Worse yet – would he be tweeting?

I guess I’m grateful the Dead existed when they did. Who knows if they would have made it today.

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4 thoughts on “The Grateful Dead: the greatest brand ever”

I’m not so sure the Dead didn’t have a target demographic (“people who like to do drugs” seems a fair summation, albeit one the Deadheads would dispute). And their motivations, most certainly were profit (had they not made so much money doing what they did over the years, I assure you they’d have moved on professionally like many did at the time who never “made it”). In some regards they were the ultimate marketers: metric tons upon metric tons of Dead merchandise have been produced and sold at concerts over the years, and there’s an argument that may be made that they are one of the originators of the “viral” strategy. While the aesthetic of their marketing was rough-shod and “organic,” it was sharp marketing none-the-less; they just didn’t use that term to describe it. It was all just part of the “scene,” in their dialect.

I agree with the viral aspect. They definitely had a viral marketing campaign before that term even existed and they were great at marketing themselves (even if unintentionally). But as far as their motivation I would argue that it was not financial. I don’t think it hurt that they made money, but in their early years they didn’t earn a dime. These guys arose from Haight-Ashbury experiment and the Summer of Love. They supported the Diggers, played free shows and gave their music to fans for free. They were born from the values of Kesey, Leary and Wolfe. I think a lot of that was lost in their later years and it has completely eroded since 1995, especially as the fan base becomes more and more removed from that era.
Thanks for reading – there’s an article by Nadya Zimmerman called “Consuming Nature: The Grateful Dead’s Performance of an Anti-Commercial Counterculture” that talks about some of this stuff too if you’re interested.

The amount of drugs these guys were taking throughout their lives, while they may have freed their minds, were not free. Nor were the eventual buses and airplanes that took them to gigs, the massive “wall of sound” speaker array they so cherished, the studio time and resources, the lawyers, the accountants and the other types who inevitably follow from such a large operation. Believe me, despite their ideals, there was a lot of money involved in what the Dead did, very quickly. There was a certain mythos about money that, for me, dissolved after interviewing so many musicians over the years. That’s not to say I don’t believe their ideals weren’t worthy or even admirable or even partly true, and I do believe that there is a certain part of art in general that will eternally remain invaluable. Still, a music journalist must keep the “journalist” part of that title in mind: It’s the truth you’re after, not the perpetuation of a myth without first-hand fact. You might have to take the “fan-boy” goggles off to claim such a title.

I don’t disagree that there is a boatload of money involved in their operation. However, I’m looking at the origins of the band and saying money wasn’t their primary goal. In ’65 they “liberated” one such massive speaker array from Fender, who had loaned it to them to use at a festival in exchange for free advertising. They loaded the equipment into their vans while no one was looking and used it to put on free shows throughout the city for more than a week. I recognize that such a large operation is an economic machine, but it wasn’t so in the beginning. Whether that has changed over 40 years is a separate issue. I don’t say this out of nostalgia or fan-dom, I say it because – based on everything I’ve read, heard and seen about the band – I think it’s true.
Shoot me an email if you want to talk further.

Author: Chris Baker

I love music and journalism and try to get as much of both as possible. I also love gold shekels but find them harder to come by. I am the music and entertainment writer for Syracuse Media Group. If you're with Rolling Stone please give me a call.